The Pauper Combo Tournament

Posted on April 6, 2022

Last week, on March 27th, the Sunday Pauper Challenge kicked off on Magic Online. These Challenge events are typically among the most premiere ways to play the Pauper format - especially in a time when paper events are scarce. They're usually seen as a benchmark when looking at the format and determining metagame health as well, so players look forward to the results excitedly. I know that as a member of the Pauper Format Panel, I certainly do - as do several of my colleagues.

It allows us - and players - the ability to watch the format and identify patterns. Are things healthy or are they concerning? Watching things play out week after week lets you see what decks are doing the best, if something might be a sleeper hit, and more. It's impossible to use any one event on its own, but when considered alongside a bunch of other events, it helps form a better picture of what's going on. This is all too clear when it comes to the March 27th Challenge - an event that stood out tremendously from the pack.

These days, Pauper Challenges often end with a Top 8 of Faeries, Boros, and Affinity with a couple other archetypes to round things out. The frequency and performance of each of these seems to shift somewhat from event to event - which is a good thing. Ebb and flow is awesome to see, after all. The March 27th Challenge, however, featured virtually none of these archetypes at the Top 8 level. No Faeries, no Boros, and no Affinity made it to the event's top 8.

Instead, the event's top bracket was filled with a myriad of combo decks and archetypes that would be considered a lower tier in the format most of the time. Today, I wanted to go down the line and talk about each list and highlight the wild things happening in this event. I've covered many of these archetypes in the past, but it'll be good to have a fresh look at them as they are today. I'll be putting the similar lists together, so it won't be cleanly 1st through 8th in order, but it'll be close enough to make sense.

Let's start with the winner of the event, NotGood's Familiars list:

Azorius Familiars | Pauper | NotGood, 1st Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

Sorceries (8)
4 Ponder
4 Preordain

Well, this deck might seem a little... familiar. In fact, I wrote about it roughly two years ago now with just about that same title. The deck is basically a midrange/control combo deck with a few different lines to win. Utilizing Sunscape Familiar, you can significantly lower the cost of spells you cast. Ideally you want two on the board so it makes most of your spells cost one mana. With the right setup, you're eventually able to utilize Ghostly Flicker and Snap with Archaeomancer to generate an infinite number of flickers, enabling infinite ETB effects and spells cast. This allows you to either gain infinite life with God-Pharaoh's Faithful, thereby allowing you to wait until you're able to get enough damage to kill the opponent outright, or get infinite ETBs with Sage's Row Denizen to mill your opponent.

Familiars is a deck that's come and gone usually being a bit under the radar the whole time. It seems a bit weird as it's actually a pretty potent deck, hence why it was able to win a MTGO Challenge like this. The problem is that due to its click-heavy play style, you need to really be able to manage the chess clock and interface of Magic Online well in order to succeed well with the deck. This means that while it might not be a great deck to pick up if you're just looking to get started online, it's not a bad choice in paper where it's a lot easier to navigate and announce your combos. NotGood is a well-known Pauper grinder who plays the format constantly and knows Familiars inside and out (you might notice their list was in my article from two years ago). As such, it's not a surprise they were able to navigate the deck to a win like this, especially in such a combo-heavy meta.

Next up is another longtime favorite - Burn:

Burn | Pauper | Magicverse, 2nd Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

Enchantments (2)
2 Curse of the Pierced Heart

Lands (18)
16 Mountain
2 Forgotten Cave

Burn is almost never the best deck in the format, and is actually somewhat subpar. However, it's one of the easiest decks in Pauper, as it is in most formats, to pick up and play and is relatively affordable. A full list can be bought on Magic Online for about $30 and in paper you can get a copy for around $60. Many of the cards are multi-format staples and even get used in other decks within the format itself. All in all, that's a great recipe for a deck to get someone new into the format, making it a popular choice for a lot of players.

As is the case with any popular deck, this means a lot of people tend to try Burn out in various events. If you go to a local store or a convention side event, odds are good you'll run into at least one Burn matchup along the way. The same is true for Magic Online where it's not uncommon to run into one virtually every league, and you usually see a few in Challenges as well. Obviously Burn doesn't have the best track record overall, as it's easy enough to hate out and can lose to itself fairly easy by just running out of gas. When it gets there, though, it sure does get there.

The deck itself hasn't changed very much over the years. I've covered it a number of times both due to its ease of access and occasional changes, and not much has really happened since I last discussed it briefly in an article from 2019. In fact, if you look at the main deck, it's nearly identical. The only differences are that Magicverse's list drops a Curse of the Pierced Heart in favor of an 18th land and the Ghitu Lavarunners have been replaced with the newer Voldaren Epicure. Savvy readers might recall I really put down Voldaren Epicure in my Crimson Vow review as it just didn't feel like a card that was going to get there with much damage or anything compared to how many other great creatures the deck had access to. As it happens, it's good at helping sift to the good cards while dealing some extra damage. Beyond that, though, nothing's changed except for the sideboard, which is to be expected after a number of years now.

We did see quite a bit of Burn this past weekend as well, so maybe this wasn't a fluke after all. We'll have to see how it continues to pan out going forward. It may be a deck worth keeping an eye out for in future events. Regarding this event, though, after Burn came a pair of Goblin Combo lists in 3rd and 4th place. Let's have a look at those lists:

Goblin Combo | Pauper | Hamuda, 3rd Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

Sorceries (8)
2 Duress
2 Faithless Looting
4 Unearth

Enchantments (2)
2 Makeshift Munitions

Goblin Combo | Pauper | Mathonical, 4th Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

Sorceries (8)
2 Duress
2 Faithless Looting
4 Unearth

Enchantments (2)
2 Makeshift Munitions

Goblin Combo is actually a deck I talked about back in January following the initial bans of Atog, Bonder's Ornament, and Prophetic Prism. If you want to see a full write-up, you can check out that article here. The long and short of the deck is you're looking to assemble a simple combination of cards in First Day of Class, Putrid Goblin, and Skirk Prospector. First Day of Class makes Putrid Goblin always get a +1/+1 counter when it enters, so if it enters with the persist ability, the two counters cancel each other out. This allows you to continually sacrifice it to the Prospector over and over again and use the mana to win utilizing either Flamewave Invoker or Makeshift Munitions.

I spoke about this deck when I did because it seemed like an up-and-coming deck. It was something people had been talking about since last year but never really got its time in the sun thanks to Modern Horizons 2 coming up so close after Strixhaven where First Day of Class dropped. Since then the deck also got cards like Deadly Dispute and Experimental Synthesizer, allowing it to perform well. The fact that it got two lists into the top four isn't a surprise, as the deck can somewhat consistently kill in just the first few turns. Combo tournament or not, this is one that you should continue to have your eyes on.

Now we get to the deck that I especially wanted to talk to when writing this article - Inside Out Combo:

Inside Out Combo | Pauper | Zoohn, 5th Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

Creatures (8)
4 Augur of Bolas
4 Tireless Tribe

Sorceries (8)
4 Ponder
4 Preordain

Artifacts (4)
4 Wedding Invitation

Yeah, that's right. Your eyes aren't deceiving you. Inside Out Combo managed a Top 8 finish in a Magic Online Pauper Challenge. I genuinely can't remember the last time this happened and I don't exactly have the historical tracking to find out when that was. What I do know is that it's a deck that fell immensely out of favor when Gush was banned, as well as - to a somewhat lesser degree - Gitaxian Probe and Daze. I'd argue that while Probe was important, it wasn't as irreplaceable as Gush was to the deck, and so the archetype largely fell to the wayside. It shows up once in a blue moon in Challenge Top 32s and MTGO league results, but it's been many a year since it cracked the Top 8.

The deck uses Tireless Tribe's activated ability in conjunction with the card Inside Out, you're able to pump Tireless Tribe up a ton to go in for the kill. This is because even though it's adding to the card's toughness when you discard, it's actually increasing the power because of layers and how things get flipped around. As such, if you cast Inside Out and discard five cards, Tireless Tribe becomes a 21/1. If you make it unblockable with Apostle's Blessing or Wedding Invitation, it can easily get a clear shot in against the opponent. If you need to make sure you can get the cards to get Tireless Tribe big enough, Whiteout does the job perfectly, as you can discard it and then return it multiple times just by sacrificing lands. If you're winning, after all, who needs lands?

You back up this combo with cards like Blacksmith's Skill and Circular Logic. The latter of those two is particularly great because you can pitch it to Tireless Tribe's own ability for a cheap counter that also buffs it at the same time. Peek acts as an effective Gitaxian Probe replacement that you simply can't cast for free, but plays the same role: gaining perfect information on your opponent's hand and making sure the coast is clear for a combo finish.

Now, personally, I doubt this finish is going to represent a major return to form for Inside Out Combo. With the format being so heavily combo-oriented for this one particular event, it's likely that it simply had a much better opportunity than it would in most other tournaments. As such, the stars aligned just right on this here, but the deck is still likely still far too fragile for most events. Still, I know a lot of people love it as an archetype, so if you want to try reliving the glory days, then it might not be a terrible choice to jam at a small local event or something like that.

Speaking of somewhat fringe combo decks, next up is not one, but two Cycling Songs lists!

Cycling Songs | Pauper | Ramelao, 6th Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

Sorceries (3)
3 Land Grant

Artifacts (5)
1 Chromatic Star
4 Lotus Petal

Cycling Songs | Pauper | Karatedom, 8th Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

Sorceries (1)
1 Exhume

Artifacts (4)
4 Lotus Petal

Lands (12)
1 Island
3 Swamp
4 Ash Barrens
4 Barren Moor

By some miracle, two whole Cycling Songs decks were able to make it into the Top 8 at 6th and 8th place. That's truly impressive, as the deck is notoriously fragile to graveyard hate, countermagic, and more. It even loses to itself a spectacular amount of the time! There's a reason the Pauper Format Panel felt a lot more secure in having a deck like this in the format compared to something like Squirrel Storm or Relay Ping Storm. All of this just makes the fact that two got in here all the more impressive.

The way the deck wins is by cycling a bunch of your creatures into the graveyard. In doing this, you fill up your graveyard while hitting a bunch of other powerful spells like Cabal Ritual, Reaping the Graves, and the namesake Songs of the Damned. With enough creatures in your graveyard, you can cast a Songs of the Damned to make a massive amount of mana, thereby allowing you to cast Reaping the Graves to get back several creatures and keep the chain rolling. Eventually, you either cast copies of Horror of the Broken Lands to get massive attacks in or ping relentlessly with Drannith Stingers to go in for the kill.

It's a deck that's simple enough to pilot, but can be tricky to make the landing stick. As you can tell, you really rely on being able to have a ton of creatures in your graveyard for cards like Songs of the Damned and Reaping the Graves. A well-timed copy of Bojuka Bog, Nihil Spellbomb, or Relic of Progenitus can therefore absolutely cripple this deck and make it extremely difficult to win. Given how common these kinds of cards can be, it's no surprise the deck doesn't usually put up the greatest of numbers. What's more, it's entirely for the deck to simply run out of ways to draw cards, allowing it to die to itself before it can close out the game. In a field of other combo decks, though, it can really shine, and it certainly did this weekend!

Last but not least is an old favorite in Mono-Black Control!

Mono-Black Control | Pauper | Draivanhoe, 7th Place MTGO Pauper Challenge

Enchantments (1)
1 Pestilence

Like Burn, Mono-Black Control is a deck that's usually fairly cheap and easy to pick up and play with, so a lot of newer players gravitate toward it. Play value creatures, take out problem creatures, and go in for a big finish with the likes of Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Gurmag Angler. The deck is somewhat a relic of a bygone era, however, and hasn't been quite as good in the last few years. However, it's still a constant favorite of many players (it was the deck that really got me into the format a few years back, so I'm no exception) and as such it shows up in events from time to time.

What's most surprising is that when you look at Mono-Black Control - which is honestly more of a midrange deck than a control deck these days - it's at its best when there's tons of creatures going around. If there's lots of tokens, faeries, and elves going around the events, the deck thrives because it's able to pick off the critters so easily thanks to Cuombajj Witches, Pestilence, and more. That's just the repeated removal too. Chainer's Edict, Cast Down, Defile, and Snuff Out can take care of most of the other big creatures no problem. So how did it do so well in a format where combo was so prevalent?

The reality is that it probably ran into a lot more of these matchups in the Swiss rounds. Going down into the Top 32 lists you start seeing a lot more of the straightforward aggro lists with Rogue Burn, Boros, Affinity, and so on. You know, the kinds of decks that Mono-Black tends to try to prey on a bit. Once it got to the Top 8 with so much combo, though, it simply wasn't up to snuff and was trounced by Hamuda's Goblin Combo list.

What you get when you look at not just the Top 8, but the whole event's Top 32, is a wildly well-rounded set of decks. There're tons of interesting things going on and a large variety of archetypes. It feels almost like an anomaly, but it's still the kind of thing that Pauper players should really love to see. I've seen suggestions we may have gotten this kind of event out of concern for Combo Tron and others that it may have been impacted by the Showcase Challenge events going on the same day. Whatever the case, this was a really sweet event and I felt like it deserved a little bit of highlighting.

I highly recommend checking out the entire set of lists for the event, which you can find here, and also keeping an eye out here for other official Pauper events every week. Each Sunday and Monday you get the weekend's most recent events and every Wednesday the newest deck dump from league 5-0s goes up. I'd love to see more events and metagames like this where there's a ton of wonderful surprises, good variety, and interesting decks. That ebb and flow is a great thing for any format, and if it keeps up, is a good sign of format health. It keeps you wondering: what's going to win it this week?

Paige Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

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TAGS articles, combo, constructed, analysis, decklist, pauper, paige smith, 04062022